Starting with the front cover there are some obvious similarities. Three gray letters and 4 boxes on the right hand side listing the contents adorn both magazines – but this is just the start of this ‘stolen’ design.

gmjab, editor of Game Maker Tech responded to the release of GMM at the GMC.

“I am not happy with this latest pretty much ‘stolen’ design. The design and article/review layout resemble the Game Maker Technology Magazine to a degree I cannot stand. You have copied almost every aspect of the design me and Rup13 worked on for over a month to get right.. Here is the list of copied things:

Front Cover layout of where you have display what is in the magazine.

The content is a complete and utter copy you have even made the first letters bold as GMTM has.

Page numbers is exactly displayed the same!

The staff opinion copied the whole quotes around the text (I don’t care if you said you didn’t take that)

The news is display in the same position

The article layout is the same. It has the title and subtitle and the “Written by” parts in the exact same positions.

Reviews are… pretty much a copy of the GMTM review page. It has the positions of all the ratings, download, pros, cons and overall. Not to mention the colouring of pros and cons are the same. You have the same ratings of ‘graphics’, ‘audio’, and ‘gameplay’. You have copied the who pros,cons and overall idea.

The final page includes most of the titles GMTM has and it also has the ‘next issue’ preview at the bottom which is a copy.

The only thing you didn’t copy was the gloss wave bar. Game Maker Magazine should be put to shame for stealing a design to make themselves look good. Next time EARN your position as every other magazine has. DON’T STEAL IT.”

Mattthew_H has apologised to GameMaker Tech for the similarities. Let’s hope that GMM can move on from what can only be described as an extremely embarrassing event and can produce their fourth issue with a unique design and high quality content.

As far as content goes Issue 3 of GMM was well placed. The first article was a look at the various off-shoot projects from GameMaker, “GM Killers”. G-creator and Enigma were featured but I thought the article was lacking in depth and should have focused more on what each project offered and what its potential was.

A couple of articles mystified me a little. Page 7’s “GMC – New look” described the changes that have occurred on the GMC over the past few months, whilst two pages were dedicated to an article entitled “What is the GMC?”. So far as I know the GMC is the only place where Game Maker Magazine is promoted – so the majority of people reading the magazine would be up-to-date with all the changes.

The Alternative Programs feature looked at free, often open source, alternatives to commercial programs and went through quite a range of software – although once again I thought this was perhaps too brief.

“Good Game Graphics” was a welcome addition, but I didn’t think it could match the quality of the pixel art tutorials previously featured in Game Maker Tech. As someone who is not good with graphics I always find simple guides like this a nice read.

There were also 4 game reviews, several tutorials, a couple of articles about YoYo Games as well as an interview with Sakisa, the creator of Crime Life.

4 Responses to Stolen design, but…

I’ve read all the way through it now. The quality of the articles was much, MUCH better than before and nowhere near as many spelling/grammar mistakes. Phil has summed up the content very well: “Lacking in depth” and “too brief”. My biggest criticism is that I felt that I didn’t learn that much after reading it. I think you should spend more time deciding whether some articles are going to be worth writing, and whether they are actually going to benefit anyone. Instead of the many articles perhaps concentrate on fewer, more in-depth, explanatory, and informative articles.
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I’m being critical here, but what the magazine really needs is more direction and thought behind articles
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I hope you find this useful GMM, and (as long as you get a new design!) I hope you do well in the future.

When I read the title I thought, oh no! But after reading the article am I pleased that at least one person realised that the content of the mag is of much better quality than the previous issues. I thank you greatfully Phil.